^ On
a 16 October:2002 Nautilus
Group (NLS) is downgraded by Wells Fargo Securities and by UBS Warburg from
Buy to Hold, by Adams Harkness from Strong Buy to Market Perform, by CIBC
World Markets from Sector Outperform to Sector Perform, by USB Piper Jaffray
from Outperform to Underperform. On the New York Stock Exchange, 9 million
of the 35 million NLS shares are traded, dropping from their previous close
of $23.85 (also the intraday high, after a rise from an 08 October intraday
low of $17.31) to an intraday low of $13.55 and closing at $13.65. They
had traded as high as $45.89 as recently as 02 May 2002. They had started
trading on 05 May 1999 at 4.23. [4~year price chart >] The
Nautilus Group is a fitness concern offering in-the-home equipment under
brand names such as Bowflex, StairMaster, and Schwinn, as well as Nautilus.
On 15 October, NLS announced third-quarter earnings of 71 cents per share,
1 cent above analysts' estimates and 49% above the 2001 third-quarter. But
the company expressed some uncertainty for 2003, hence the downgrades.

2002 On 15 October AMERCO (UHAL) announced default
on a $100 million debt due that day. Fitch Ratings lowers AMERCO's senior
unsecured debt and preferred stock ratings to 'DD' and 'D' from 'B+' and
'B-' (to which, one day earlier, it had reduced them from 'BB+' and 'BB-').
On
the NASDAQ, 415 thousand of the 26 million UHAL shares are traded, dropping
from their previous close of $7.20 to an intraday low of $3.10 and closes
at $7.20. It had trended downward for at least the last 5 years ($35.88
on 20 October 1997) and traded as high as $18.20 as recently as 15 May 2002.
[< 5~year price chart]. AMERCO is a holding company whose principal
subsidiaries are U-Haul International, Inc. (U-Haul), Republic Western Insurance
Co., Oxford Life Insurance Co., and AMERCO Real Estate Co. U-Haul is the
leading consumer truck and trailer rental company in North America and maintains
a strong market position in the self-storage market.

2002 The Netherlands' Prime Minister
Jan Peter Balkenende, a Christian Democrat, resigns. He will stay on as
the head of a caretaker government until new elections in about two months.
In the government three-party coalition, the Christian Democrats and the
Liberals grew exasperated with the infighting among their coalition partners,
the right-wing List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), created in February, which came in
second in the 15 May 2002 general elections, just nine days after Fortuyn,
its populist founder, was killed by a lone gunman, an animal rights activist.
The government had already adopted some of the LPF's proposals, including
a stricter immigration policy, a crackdown on crime and some reforms of
the inefficient public health system. But the LPF's 26 seats in Parliament
and its four ministerial posts were occupied by newcomers who lacked political
experience, party discipline, and a coherent program. They contradicted
each other, changing leaders, forcing some members to resign and expelling
two deputies. One faction now wants to replace the latest party leader,
Harry Wijnschenk, the publisher of a motorcycle magazine. Two LPF cabinet
members were constantly fighting to control the party: Herman Heinsbroek,
a wealthy owner of a record company who was the economy minister, and deputy
prime minister Eduard Bomhoff, who had been an economist and an iconoclastic
newspaper columnist. It is questionable whether the LPF can survive at all.
A recent opinion poll said that it could win just 4 of its present 26 seats
in new elections.2002 At a ceremony at the statue
of Sherlock Holmes outside Baker Street subway station in London, he becomes
the first fictional character to be made an honorary fellow of the Royal
Society of Chemistry. Fellow fellow John Watson (no, not the fictional Dr.
Watson) says: Sherlock Holmes was way beyond his time in using chemistry
and chemical sciences as a means of cracking crime. Many years ago Holmes
was using what would one day be forensic science in detection. Thanks to
this science today, more crimes are solved than ever before. This
year is the centenary of Holmes' most celebrated case, The
Hound of the Baskervilles. 2001The Times of London reveals that, recently, Scottish charity worker
Lady Morton, 100, hit a traffic island while driving her 100th birthday
present, a new car. It is her first accident since she bought her first
car in 1927. She intends to continue driving, as her license goes on until
2004. 2001 Best-selling British novelist Ken Follett
bids 2200 pounds ($3185) at a London charity auction to appear in another
author's next book. The millionaire thriller writer is taking part in the
'Immortality Auction'  a charity event which allows members of the
public to pay to star in a bestseller. Follett won the right to appear in
the next book by British cult fantasy writer Terry Pratchett. "I want to
appear as a giant but Terry is making no promises," Follett said in a statement.
"All he asked me is how I want to die, which is a little disconcerting."
Pratchett's "Discworld" series dominated a recent survey of Britain's best-selling
books of all time. The auction raised 5000 pounds for the Medical Foundation
for the Care of Victims of Torture, which supports refugees and asylum seekers.
Follett was also one of nine authors selling a place in their next novel.
Organizers did not name the other successful bidders, but said the amount
raised by each author was: Raymond Benson 180 pounds, Margaret Atwood 200
pounds, Pat Barker 200 pounds, Robert Harris 220 pounds, Ian McEwan 280
pounds, David Lodge 300 pounds, Zadie Smith 300 pounds and Follett 350 pounds.
In last year's inaugural auction, Australian satirical writer Kathy Lette
received the highest bid of 6200 pounds ($9090) and pledged to give Sherlaine
Green a major part in her next comic romp. The charity raised nearly 25'000
pounds from last year's auction. 2000 As the al-Aqsa
intifada heats up, US President Clinton initiates a fresh effort to try
to cool Middle East tensions at an emergency summit in Egypt that includes
Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as the leaders of Egypt and Jordan
and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. 2000 Million
Family March, organized by Louis Farrakhan. 1999
Russia pursues Chechen Islamist campaign (CNN)
1998 The Norwegian Nobel Committee announces that
it has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1998 to John Hume and
David Trimble for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict
in Northern Ireland.  MORE1998 Hackers break into America Online and altered
the online service's Internet address. Millions of e-mail messages were
misdirected as a result.1995 The Million
Man March for 'A Day of Atonement' takes place in Washington, D.C.,
organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.1995 Primer juicio con jurado, de carácter experimental,
que se celebra en España desde la aprobación de la Ley que lo establece.
Siete hombres y dos mujeres juzgaron y condenaron en la Audiencia de Palma
de Mallorca a un hombre acusado de asesinato. 1994 Finlandia ratifica en referéndum su integración en
la Unión Europea (UE) con el 57% de los votos. 1994 La coalición gobernante del canciller Helmut Kohl
vence en las elecciones legislativas en Alemania. 1991 Levon Ter Petrosian, hasta entonces presidente del
Soviet Supremo de Ereván, resulta elegido presidente de Armenia en las primeras
elecciones presidenciales y democráticas. 1990 US forces reach 200'000 in the Persian Gulf 1987 175-kph winds cause blackout in London, much of
southern England 1987 At 20:30 in Midland, Texas, Jessica McClure, 19
months old, is rescued 59 hours (58 of digging and of intensive TV and other
news media coverage) after falling 6.7 m into a narrow well shaft on 14
October 1987. Jessica would remember nothing though she lost her right little
toe and would be left with a minor scar from a cosmetic surgery skin graft
on her forehead, performed at Midland's Memorial Hospital, from which she
was released on 20 November 1987. But the intense publicity affected the
other people involved. Robert O’Donnell, the paramedic who freed Jessica
from the well, suffered from depression and post traumatic stress syndrome
after the incident and the controversy surrounding a movie made about it;
he shot himself dead in 1995. Jessica's mother, Reba Cissy,
18 at the time, and teenaged father, Chip, would divorce and marry others.
Chip would also divorce his second wife. Odessa American photographer
Scott Shaw, 24, would win a Pulitzer Prize for his photo of the newly rescued
infant surrounded by weary-eyed rescuers. The ABC TV movie Everybody's
Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure would be first shown on 21 May
1989.1986 Se decreta el estado de excepción en Nicaragua. 1986 The Nobel Prize in literature goes to Wole
Soyinka from Nigeria, in his early fifties. Among his writings are the
collection of essays Myth, Literature and the African World and
some of he finest poetical plays that have written in English, such as A
Dance of the Forests and Death and The King's Horseman. 
MORE1986 The Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the1986 Alfred Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Professor James McGill Buchanan,
of George Mason University, Virginia, for his development of the contractual
and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making.
MORE 1986 US government closes down due to budget
problems.1986 An Israeli F-4 Phantom jet is shot down
in southern Lebanon. The two aboard parachute out. The pilot is rescued,
but the navigator, Capt. Ron Arad [05 May 1958 – 1996] is captured
by members of the Lebanese Shiite militia Amal, and is then held hostage
for decades. It is believed that Arad was bartered and sold over the years
to different Lebanese factions and was moved back and forth between Lebanon
and Iran, and that he died in 1996 in the hands of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah,
who claim that Arad disappeared when his guards left their post. 1985 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided
to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1985 to Professor Klaus von Klitzing,
Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Federal Republic
of Germany, for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect.  MORE1984 The Norwegian
Nobel Committee has chosen to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1984 to
Black Bishop
Desmond Tutu, General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches,
for his role as a unifying leader figure in the campaign to resolve the
problem of apartheid in South Africa.  MORE

^1984 First Baboon Heart Transplant At Loma Linda University Medical
Center in California, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performs the first baboon
heart transplant, an operation in which a diseased human heart is
replaced by a healthy baboon heart. The patient is a fifteen-day-old
baby girl known as "Baby Fae," whose plight attracts national attention.
After a month-long struggle, the infant's immune system finally rejects
the baboon heart, and Baby Fae dies on 15 November.

1982
Mt Palomar Observatory 1st to detect Halley's comet on 13th return
1982 Shultz warns US will withdraw from UN if it
votes to exclude Israel. 1981 Una delegación del
PCE (Partido Comunista de España) entrega en el Ministerio de la
Presidencia 500'000 firmas contra el ingreso de España en la OTAN. 1978 The college of cardinals elects the Archbishop of
Kracow, Poland, Karol Cardinal Karol Wojtyla [18 May 1920 – 02 Apr
2005], the first non-Italian Pope since 1523, he takes the name of John
Paul II. {Cardinal Wojtyla greeted a few weeks earlier by his immediate
predecessor, the 33-day pope John Paul I [17
October 1912 – 28 Sep 1978] >}1978
Juan Marsé gana el premio Planeta de novela con su obra La muchacha
de las bragas de oro. 1975 María Estela Martínez
de Perón retoma la presidencia de Argentina.1973
The Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting decides to award the Peace
Prize for 1973 to Henry
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the two chief negotiators who succeeded in
arranging the Vietnam ceasefire after negotiating for nearly four years.
Kissinger would accept, but Tho decline the award until such time as "peace
is truly established.
 MORE 1970 Anwar Sadat is elected president
of Egypt, succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser.

^1968 Vietnam: Bombing
halt discussed
In a series of meetings with US Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, South
Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu insists that North Vietnam assent
to three conditions prior to a bombing halt. He said the North Vietnamese
had to (1) agree to respect the neutrality of the Demilitarized Zone
(DMZ), (2) stop shelling South Vietnamese cities and towns, and (3)
agree to South Vietnamese participation in the Paris talks. He also
demanded that the National Liberation Front, the Communist political
organization in South Vietnam, be excluded from the negotiations.
Thieu seemed to soften during his discussions with Bunker: on October
22, he announced that he would not oppose a bombing halt.

^1964 China becomes world's 4th nuclear power
The People's Republic of China detonates
its first nuclear bomb at the Lop Nor test site in the western province
of Xin Jiang. The successful explosion of the twenty-two-kiloton fission
bomb makes China the world's fourth nuclear power, after the United
States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Nuclear testing at the
Lop Nor site continues well into the 1990s, with China detonating
an average of one nuclear weapon every year within the extremely radioactive
area of Lop Nor. In 1980, exactly sixteen years after the detonation
of their first bomb, China moved its nuclear testing out of the atmosphere
and underground. The People's
Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability,
after a successful nuclear test on this day in 1964. China is the
fifth member of this exclusive club, joining the United States, the
Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France.
US officials were not terribly surprised by the test; intelligence
reports since the 1950s indicated that China was working to develop
an atomic bomb, possibly aided by Soviet technicians and scientists.
Nevertheless, the successful test did cause concern in the US government.
During the early 1960s, China took a particularly radical stance that
advocated worldwide revolution against the forces of capitalism, working
strenuously to extend its influence in Asia and the new nations of
Africa. The test, coming just two months after the Tonkin Gulf Resolution
(a congressional resolution giving President Lyndon B. Johnson the
power to respond to communist aggression in Vietnam) created a frightening
specter of nuclear confrontation and conflict in Southeast Asia.
The test also concerned the Soviet
Union; the split between the USSR and Communist China over ideological
and strategic issues had widened considerably by 1964. The Chinese
acquisition of nuclear capabilities only heightened the tensions between
the two nations. Indeed, the test might have been a spur to the Soviets
to pursue greater efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons;
in 1968, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Little wonder that the
Soviets would wish to see China's nuclear force limited, since the
first Chinese intermediate-range missiles were pointedly aimed at
Russia. The Cold War nuclear arms race had just become a good deal
more complicated.

^1962 Kennedy awakes to the Cuban Missile Crisis AStill in his pajamas, US President
Kennedy
is informed during his breakfast that photoanalysts have the previous
day detected offensive Soviet missile bases in Cuba. It is now clear
that for months the Soviets had purposely been deceiving the US by
claiming that they only have purely defensive missiles in Cuba. Kennedy
immediately schedules two meetings for that morning. First, he wants
to see the
photographs himself. Kennedy remarks, "They look like footballs
on a football field." Those missiles have a range of 2000 km, they
could reach New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Houston. The missiles
are not yet operational but they soon can be.
For the second meeting Kennedy picks a group of trusted government
officials, later referred to as the Executive Committee of the National
Security Council (EX-COMM).
Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara outlines three possible courses of action for the US
to take against Cuba and the Soviet Union.
1. Diplomacy with Castro and Khrushchev  an option which most
members of EX-COMM deem unlikely to succeed.
2. Surveillance combined with a blockade against offensive weapons
entering Cuba.
3. Military action against Cuba, starting with an air attack against
the missiles, followed by an invasion.
EX-COMM works from the premise that the missile warheads were not
yet in Cuba. Therefore, the goal is to stop the warheads from reaching
Cuba or to prevent the missiles from becoming fully operational. Most
of the discussion is of the military option and how the Soviets would
respond. What EX-COMM dosn't
know was that the Soviets do have nuclear warheads in Cuba. They had
also installed battlefield nuclear weapons in Cuba to stop an invasion.
Kennedy wants to appear tough
yet avoid a military confrontation. No matter what action the US takes,
EX-COMM expects Khrushchev to retaliate.

^1934 Mao's Long March begins.
Mao Tse-tung decides to abandon his base
in Kiangsi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. With
his pregnant wife and about 30'000 Red Army troops, he sets out on
the "Long March. The embattled
Chinese Communists break through Nationalist enemy lines and begin
an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China.
Known as Ch'ang Cheng  the "Long March"  the retreat lasted
368 days and covered 6,000 miles, nearly twice the distance from New
York to San Francisco. Civil war in China between the Nationalists
and the Communists broke out in 1927. In 1931, Communist leader Mao
Zedong was elected chairman of the newly established Soviet Republic
of China, based in Kiangsi province in the southwest. Between 1930
and 1934, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek launched a series
of five encirclement campaigns against the Soviet Republic.
Under the leadership of Mao, the Communists
employed guerrilla tactics to resist successfully the first four campaigns,
but in the fifth, Chiang raised 700'000 soldiers and built fortifications
around the Communist positions. Hundreds of thousands of peasants
were killed or died of starvation in the siege, and Mao was removed
as chairman by the Communist Central Committee. The new Communist
leadership employed more conventional warfare tactics, and its Red
Army was decimated. With defeat imminent, the Communists decided to
break out of the encirclement at its weakest points. The Long March
began at 5:00 p.m. on October 16, 1934. Secrecy and rear-guard actions
confused the Nationalists, and it was several weeks before they realized
that the main body of the Red Army had fled. The retreating force
initially consisted of 86'000 soldiers, 15'000 civilian men, and 35
women. Weapons and supplies were borne on men's backs or in horse-drawn
carts, and the line of marchers stretched for 80 km. The Communists
generally marched at night, and when the enemy was not near, a long
column of torches could be seen snaking over valleys and hills into
the distance. The first disaster
came in November, when Nationalist forces blocked the Communists'
route across the Hsiang River. It took a week for the Communists to
break through the fortifications and cost them 50'000 men  more
than half their number. After that debacle, Mao steadily regained
his influence, and in January he was again made chairman during a
meeting of the party leaders in the captured city of Tsuni. Mao changed
strategy, breaking his force into several columns that would take
varying paths to confuse the enemy. There would be no more direct
assaults on enemy positions. And the destination would now be Shensi
Province, in the far northwest, where the Communists hoped to fight
the Japanese invaders and earn the respect of China's masses. After
enduring starvation, aerial bombardment, and almost daily skirmishes
with Nationalist forces, Mao halted his columns at the foot of the
Great Wall of China on 20 October 1935. Waiting for them were
five machine-gun- and red-flag-bearing horsemen. "Welcome, Chairman
Mao," one said. "We represent the Provincial Soviet of Northern Shensi.
We have been waiting for you anxiously. All that we have is at your
disposal!" The Long March was over. The Communist marchers crossed
24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges, mostly snow-capped. Only 4000 soldiers
completed the journey. The majority of those who did not, perished.
It was the longest continuous march in the history of warfare and
contributed to the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed leader
of the Chinese Communists. Learning of the Communists' heroism and
determination in the Long March, thousands of young Chinese traveled
to Shensi to enlist in Mao's Red Army. After fighting the Japanese
for a decade, the Chinese Civil War resumed in 1945. Four years later,
the Nationalists were defeated, and Mao proclaimed the People's Republic
of China. He served as chairman until his death in 1976.

^1911 Progressive Party nominates LaFollette for US
President The
Progressive Party was searching for a presidential candidate to help
them wage war against the ever-expanding corporations that they felt
were engulfing the nation. The party had once nominated Teddy Roosevelt,
but the former president, who had allowed the United States Steel
Corporation to grow into an industry-dominating giant, was hardly
a model trust-buster. So, on this day, the Progressives gave the nod
to Republican reformer Robert LaFollette. However, fatigue prevented
LaFollette from carrying the nomination through to the convention
and he was quickly replaced by the more trust-friendly Roosevelt.
Despite his populist appeal and previous experience in the Oval Office,
Roosevelt went on to lose the general election to William Howard Taft.

^1859 Abolitionists led by John Brown raid Harpers Ferry
At midnight, the radical abolitionist
John Brown leads a group of twenty-one followers, calling themselves
the "Provisional Army of the United States," on a raid of the Federal
arsenal of Harpers Ferry, located in present-day West Virginia.
Brown, born in Connecticut on 09 May
1800, first became militant during the mid-1850s, when as a leader
of the Free State forces in the territory of Kansas he fought pro-slavery
settlers, contributing to the sharply divided territory's popular
designation as "Bleeding Kansas. For example on 24 May 1856
he led the "Pottawatomie Massacre" by John Brown's gang
In retaliation for the sacking of the abolitionist town of Lawrence,
Kansas, by pro-slavery forces, militant abolitionist John Brown led
a raid against a pro-slavery settlement along Pottawatomie Creek.
Brown’s small force, which included four of his sons, fell on the
settlement at night and massacred five men, including two teenage
boys. Although they owned no
slaves, Brown deemed the Pottawatomie settlers deserving of capital
punishment because they had supported the Missouri faction in the
dispute over the Kansas territorial government. Trouble in the territory
began with the signing of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act by President
Franklin
Pierce [23 Nov 1804 – 08 Oct 1869]. The act stipulated that settlers
in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide
by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In
early 1855, Kansas’ first election proved a violent affair as over
5000 so-called "Border Ruffians" invaded the territory from western
Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature.
To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew
H. Reeder, appointed territorial governor by President Pierce, reluctantly
approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces
were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership
of John Brown. In 1859, Brown left "Bleeding Kansas," as it had become
popularly known, and settled on a more ambitious plan. Achieving
only moderate success against slavery on the Kansas frontier, Brown
settled on a more ambitious plan in 1859. With a group of racially
mixed followers, Brown set out to Harpers Ferry, intending to seize
the arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains of
Maryland and Virginia, where they would establish an abolitionist
republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites. Their republic
would form a guerilla army to fight slaveholders and ignite slave
insurrections, and its population would grow exponentially with the
influx of liberated and fugitive slaves.
At Harpers Ferry, Brown's well-trained unit is initially successful
 in the space of two hours, the raiders seize the Shenandoah
Bridge, Hall's Rifle Works, and the Federal arsenal, barricade the
bridge across the Potomac, cut telegraph wires, and take several prisoners.
But at 01:20, Brown's plans begin to deteriorate when his raiders
stop a Baltimore-bound train, and then allow it to pass through.
News of the raid spreads quickly and
militia companies from Maryland and Virginia arrive the next day,
killing or capturing several raiders. On 18 October 1859, US Marines
commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart,
both of whom are destined to become famous Confederate generals, recapture
the Federal arsenal, taking John Brown and several other raiders alive.
John Brown was tried by the Commonwealth
of Virginia for treason, murder and inciting slaves to rebellion.
On 02 November 1859, Brown is sentenced to death by hanging, and on
the day of his execution, 02 December 1859, ten months before the
outbreak of the Civil War, he prophetically writes, "The crimes of
this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.
Abolitionist Henry
David Thoreau [12 Jul 1817 – 06 May 1862] wrote A
Plea for Captain John Brown , A
Plea for Captain John Brown Walter
Hawkins [1809–] wrote Old
John Brown: The Man Whose Soul is Marching On Stephen
Vincent Benet [22 Jul 1898 – 13 Mar 1943] wrote John Brown's Body

2006 Boni M. Frederick [1939–], social worker beaten
and stabbed to death by Christopher Wayne Luttrell, 23, a convicted burglar
in violation of parole, and his mate Renee Terrell [16 Apr 1973~], in their
Henderson, Kentucky, home. The two then flee in Frederick's station wagon
with Renee's son, developmentally disabled Saige R. Terrell [03 Jan 2006~],
who was in state custody since 16 January 2006 (because of neglect), and
whom Frederick had taken to the home for a visit. The mother had recently
heard that the state would put the baby up for adoption. On 20 October 2006,
the baby is rescued, and its abductors arrested near Godfrey, Illinois.
—(061020)

2006 At least 103 persons, including a
suicide truck bomber, at least 94 sailors and 8 civilian Navy employees,
some of them drivers of some of about 15 Navy buses, at 13:45 (08:15 UT)
about 170km north-east of Colombo, Sri Lanka, at a transit point for security
personnel coming to and from the front line of conflict with the Tamil
Tigers in the Trincomalee district. Some 150 persons are wounded. —(061016)

2005 US
Army Pfc. Joseph Cruz, 22, of the 1st Battalion, 508th
Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, from noncombat injuries suffered
the previous day in an accident in Afghanistan. —(051108)

2004 Six persons near Fort Huachuca, Arizona, after a Sports-Utility-Vehicle,
suspected to be loaded with perhaps 20 undocumented immigrants, crashes
into ten other vehicles at 11:45 (18:45 UT), after its tires are punctured
by police spiked devices as it was fleeing at perhaps 150 km/h. Fifteen
persons are injured.

2004 Pierre Emil George
Salinger, born on 14 June 1925 (to a French mother), US newsman,
was press secretary to US president John F. Kennedy [29 May 1917 –
22 Nov 1963]. He dies in self-imposed exile in France, where he had gone
because of the fraudulent 2000 election of “Dubya” Bush [06
Jul 1946~] “unfit to be US president”.

2004
Douglas Wiser, 31, after a strong wind gust hit his surfing kite,
dragging him 100 meters from the sea and slamming him through the limbs
of a tree and into a recreational vehicle, at Te Awanga, near Hastings in
the Hawke’s Bay wine growing area of North Island, New Zealand. Wiser was
a visiting US winemaker from Geneva NY.

2003 Grace Headlee,
4, and Gabriel Amaya, 5 months, drowned in the bathtub by their
mother, Rebekah Amaya, 32, who then slashes her wrists and survives, in
Lamar, Colorado. Her current husband is Leo Amaya, her former one is policeman
Mark Headlee.

2003 Eight Iraqi gunmen; two Iraqi policemen; Staff Sgt.
Joseph P. Bellavia, 28, of Wakefield MA; Cpl. Sean
R. Grilley, 24, of San Bernardino, CA; and Lt. Col. Kim
S. Orlando, 43, of TN [photo >], commanding the
US Army's 716th Military Police Battalion, 101st Airborne Division (Air
Assault), part of the US occupation forces in Iraq, to which the other two
belonged, in gunfight lasting into early on 17 October, with gunmen who
were congregating on a road near a mosque in Karbala after the 21:00 curfew
to guard the headquarters of a Shiite cleric. 7 US soldiers and 18 Iraqi
gunmen are wounded.

2002 Angela Maria Dawson,
36, and her children: Juan Ortiz, 10; LaWanda Ortiz,14; twins Keith and
Kevin Dawson, 8; and Carnell Dawson Jr., 10; burned in the Oliver
neighborhood of Baltimore, after 02:00, when drug-dealer Darrell L. Brooks,
21, kicks in her door, pours gasoline on the floor and lights it, because
he was angry at her constantly confronting the drug dealers infesting the
neighborhood and calling the police. Angela's husband, Carnell Dawson
Sr., 43, is severely burned and fractures his pelvis jumping from
an upper floor window of the three-story row house at 1401 East Preston
Street. He would die on 23 October 2002. The house had already been firebombed
on 03 October (probably by the same Brooks), also in the middle of the night,
but the family had escaped injury. Police offered to move the Dawsons, but
they wanted to stay. Before that, neighbor John L. Henry, 18, had assaulted
Angela Dawson and spray-painted a curse on the wall of her family's home.
Brooks has a long history of of armed robbery, assault, drug and other charges.
2002 Cole Bailey Jr., brutally beaten to death by
a group of White supremacists after leaving a pool hall. Cole’s father
Cole Bailey Sr. would hire private investigators and track down the members
of the racist group, getting two of them arrested. However the leader of
the group, Samuel Compton, remains at large (as of 12 Feb 2003).

^2000 Antonio Russo, Italian radio journalist,
found dead in Republic of Georgia. On
001021 his mother would say that her son had uncovered evidence of
Russian atrocities in Chechnya shortly before his murder. Antonio
spoke to me of a video cassette in a dramatic telephone call, several
weeks before he died," Beatrice Russo says. My son was very
shaken, he said the images on this cassette were terrible, with mutilated
and disfigured bodies.
"In his last call on Saturday [001014], he was calm and said he would
return to Rome," she says, adding that the cassette was not among
his recovered belongings after his body was found 25 kilometers from
the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Monday 001016.
Antonio Russo had been in the Caucasus region since July, mostly covering
the war in Chechnya, working for. Radio
Radicale.

2000 Mel Carnahan, 66, Roger Carnahan, 44, and Chris Sifford, 37,
in 19:30 crash of plane piloted by Roger on way a campaign rally for his
father, Mel, Democrat US senate candidate and Missouri governor. Sifford
was a campaign advisor. Mel Carnahan was born on 11 February 1934; he was
elected governor on 03 November 1992 and re-elected on 05 November 1996.
The state constitution barred him from seeking a third term as governor.
Carnahan's name would remain on the ballot for the US Senate, and he would
be elected. His widow, Jean,
would be appointed to serve until 2002, when she would lose the election
to Republican Jim Talent.2000 El coronel médico Antonio Muñoz
Cariñanos muere en su consulta de Sevilla asesinado por la banda
terrorista ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna).1998 Jonathan Bruce
Postel, ingeniero estadounidense considerado el padre de Internet.
1988 Muere en un atentado de ETA el primer agente de la policía
autónoma vasca.
1996: 84 soccer fans as crowd stampedes trying to squeeze into
Mateo Flores National Stadium in Guatemala City.

^1991: George Jo Hennard and 22 he shoots in Killeen
killing. On a
Wednesday afternoon in Killeen, Texas, George Jo Hennard drives his
pickup truck through the plate-glass window of Luby's Cafeteria and
begins firing indiscriminately into the crowded restaurant with a
semi-automatic pistol. The deranged Hennard killed 22 people and wounded
20, one fatally, before turning the gun on himself. Present in the
restaurant was Suzanna Gratia, who narrowly escaped being shot but
whose mother and father were killed. Gratia had her own gun with her
that day but had left it locked in her car as required by Texas state
law. After recovering from the tragedy, Gratia became a fierce advocate
of the right to carry concealed handguns in public places and led
a popular movement that resulted in the approval of the Texas Concealed
Handgun License Act in 1995. In 1996, she was elected to the Texas
House of Representatives as Suzanna Gratia-Hupp and continued to be
a vocal proponent of the right to bear arms.

1987 Thomas Sankara, político y militar burkinabés.1983 Harish-Chandra,
of his 4th heart attack, India US mathematian born on 11 October 1923. His
most notable work was on representations of semisimple Lie algebras and
groups.1981 Moshe Dayan, 66, Israel's general with
an eye-patch (he lost his left eye fighting the Vichy French in Syria),
soldier and statesman who led Israel to dramatic victories over its Arab
neighbors and became a symbol of security to his countrymen. He wrote Diary
of the Sinai Campaign (1966) and The Story of My Life (1976).1959 George Catlett Marshall, militar estadounidense, autor
del plan que llevó su nombre para la reconstrucción económica de Europa.
1951 Liaquat Ali Khan PM of Pakistan, assassinated
by Said Akbar

^1946 Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Alfred
Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, and Arthur SeyssInquart,Nazi leaders hanged as war criminals
after Nuremberg trials. Eleven were scheduled, but Hermann Göring
commited suicide the day before. Martin Bormann had been tried and
condemned to death in absentia, but he was never captured. On
01 October 1946, the 10 were found guilty by the International War
Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to death, along with Göring and
Bormann. Hermann Göring [12 Jan 1893 – 15
Oct 1946], founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air
force, who at sentencing was called the "leading war aggressor and
creator of the oppressive program against the Jews," committed suicide
by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi Party leader
Martin Bormann [17
Jun 1900 – May 1945] was condemned to death in absentia;
he is now known to have died in Berlin at the end of the war.
Four of the original 24 defendants
were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years:
Karl Dönitz [16 Sep 1891 – 22 Dec 1980], Baldur von Schirach
[09
May 1907 – 08 Aug 1974] (20 years), Albert Speer [19 Mar
1905 – 01 Sep 1981], and Konstantin von Neurath [02 Feb 1873
– 14 Aug 1956]. Three were sentenced to life imprisonment: Rudolf
Hess [26 Apr 1894 – 17 Aug 1987] (Hitler's former deputy), Walther
Funk [18 Aug 1890 – 31
May 1960], and Erich Raeder [24 Apr 1876 – 06 Nov 1960].
Three others were acquitted: Hjalmar Schacht [22 Jan 1877 –
04 Jun 1970], Franz von Papen [29
Oct 1879 – 02 May 1969], and Hans Fritzsche [1899 –
27 Sep 1953]. Two were not sentenced: Robert Ley [15 Feb 1890 –
25 Oct 1945] who was already dead,
having committed suicide while in prison; and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen
und Halbach [07 Aug 1870 – 16 Jan 1950], whose mental and physical
condition prevented his being tried.
The trial, whose 216 sessions had lasted nearly 10 months, was conducted
by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United
States, the USSR, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial
of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from
crimes against peace, to crimes of war and crimes against humanity.
On 16 October 1946, 10 of the architects of Nazi policy are hanged
one by one.Hans Frank
[03
May 1900–]: After the Nazis came to power in Germany in
1933, Frank was appointed to a variety of important posts, including
president of the Reichstag and minister of justice in the Nazi government.
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Frank was appointed governor-general,
becoming the supreme chief of occupied Poland's civil administration.
An enthusiastic proponent of Nazi racist ideology, Frank ordered the
execution of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the wholesale confiscation
of Polish property, the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Polish
workers who were shipped to Germany, and the herding of most of Poland's
Jews into ghettos as a prelude to their extermination.Wilhelm
Frick [12
Feb 1877–]. As Hitler's national minister of the interior
(1933-1943), he played a significant role in devising and obtaining
passage of legislation providing for government by decree (March 1933)
and in drafting subsequent measures against the Jews, especially the
notorious Nürnberg laws of September 1935. With the growth of the
SS (Schutzstaffel) as the state's principal internal-security force,
however, Frick's importance in the government declined, and in 1943
he was replaced at the interior ministry by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
Thereafter Frick served as Reich protector for Bohemia and Moravia
until the end of World War II.Julius
Streicher [22
Feb 1885–], a close friend of Adolf Hitler. As the founder
(1923) and editor of the anti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Sturmer,
Streicher achieved a position of great wealth and influence in Nazi
Germany. Der Sturmer's crude anti-Jewish invective provided a focus
for Hitler's persecutory racial policies; the newspaper initiated
the general campaign that led to the passage of the Nürnberg laws
in 1935.Alfred
Rosenberg [12
Jan 1893–]: German ideologist of Nazism. Born in Estonia,
then a part of Russia, Rosenberg in 1919 he went to Munich, where
he joined Adolf Hitler, Ernst Röhm, and Rudolf Hess in the nascent
Nazi Party. As editor of the party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter,
he drew on the ideas of the English racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain
and on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a 19th-century
fabrication concerning a supposed Jewish plot for world domination.
In Der Zukunftsweg einer deutschen
Aussenpolitik (1927; "The Future Direction of a German Foreign
Policy"), Rosenberg urged the conquest of Poland and Russia. Der
Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1934; "The Myth of the 20th Century")
was a tedious exposition of German racial purity. According to Rosenberg,
the Germans descended from a Nordic race that derived its character
from its environment: a pure, cold, semi-Arctic continent, now disappeared.
The Germans, as representatives of this race, were entitled to dominate
Europe. Their enemies were "Russian Tartars" and "Semites. The
latter included Jews, the Latin peoples, and Christianity, particularly
the Catholic Church. Rosenberg's anti-Semitism and advocacy of "Nordic"
expansionism were in accord with Hitler's own violent prejudices.
His writings and speeches were published under the title of Blut
und Ehre (1934-41; "Blood and Honor").
Ernst Kaltenbrunner [04
Oct 1903–]: He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1932 and
became leader of the SS (elite guards) in Austria in 1935. After the
Anschluss he became the official head of the Austrian storm troopers.
In 1938 he was appointed minister of state security in Austria. Following
the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak patriots in
June 1942, Kaltenbrunner was picked by Heinrich Himmler to head Germany's
Reich Security Central Office in January 1943. As such, he was in
charge of both the Gestapo and the system of Nazi concentration camps
scattered throughout Europe. A rabid anti-Semite, he was said to have
agreed with Himmler at a conference in 1942 that the gas chamber should
be the form of execution used in the slaughter of Jews. Kaltenbrunner
controlled the administrative apparatus for carrying out the extermination
of European Jewry in 1943-1945. Joachim von Ribbentrop
[30
Apr 1893–], foreign minister under the Nazi regime (1933-1945),
and chief negotiator of the treaties with which Germany entered World
War II. Ribbentrop's greatest diplomatic coup was the German-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact of 23 August 1939, which cleared the way for
Hitler's attack on Poland on 01 September 1939, thus beginning World
War II.Fritz Sauckel
[27 Oct 1894–]: From 1942
to 1945 during World War II, he was chief commissioner for the utilization
of manpower and met Hitler's request for greater industrial production
by rounding up slave laborers for use in Germany's factories. Traveling
through Nazi-occupied territories in Europe, he recruited slave labor
by force and ruthlessly exploited their capacity for work. He was
found guilty of the deportation for slave labor of 5'000'000 people
under cruel and insufferable conditions.Alfred Jodl
[10
May 1890–], 56, general named chief of the armed forces
operations staff on 23 August 1939, and, with Wilhelm Keitel, became
a key figure in Hitler's central military command, directing all of
Germany's campaigns except the beginning of the invasion of Russia
in June of 1941. On 07 May 1945, he signed the capitulation of the
German armed forces to the Western Allies at Reims, France. As chief
of operations staff he had signed many orders for the shooting of
hostages and for other acts contrary to international law.Wilhelm
Keitel [22
Sep 1882–], field marshal and head of the German armed forces
high command during World War II. One of Adolf Hitler's most loyal
and trusted lieutenants, he became chief of the Führer's personal
military staff and helped direct most of the Third Reich's World War
II campaigns. Keitel became chief of staff of the armed forces office,
equivalent to minister of war, in 1935 and in 1938 advanced to head
of the armed forces high command, which Hitler had created as a central
control agency for Germany's military effort. He was convicted of
authorizing the shooting of hostages and other war crimes.Arthur
Seyss-Inquart [22
Jul 1892–], Austrian Nazi leader who was chancellor of Austria
during the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938). Subsequently
he served as Reichsstatthalter (governor) of the new Austrian provincial
administration until April 30, 1939. He was later appointed deputy
governor in Poland and eventually Reichskommissar (commissioner) of
the occupied Netherlands. Following the defeat of Germany in World
War II, he was tried and executed as a war criminal at Nürnberg.

1942 Some 40'000 in cyclone in Bay of Bengal, south of
Calcutta.1937 William
Sealey Gosset
“Student”, English chemist and mathematical statistician born
on 13 June 1876. He invented the t-test to handle small samples for quality
control in brewing. 1926 Some 1200 on troop ship which sinks
in Yangtze River 1925 Christian Krohg, Oslo Norwegian
painter, draftsman, and writer, born on 13 August 1852.  more
with links to two images.1922 Miquel Costa y Llobera,
poeta catalán. 1904 María de las Mercedes Borbón y
Habsburgo, infanta de España y princesa heredera de la Corona.
. 1893 Charles François Gounod, compositor
francés. 1890 Auguste Toulmouche, French artist
born on 21 September 1829.1885 Louis Riel, 40, hanged
by the Canadians for treason, because he was the leader of French-Indian
métis resistance to the influx of English-speaking Canadians. He
had become a US citizen in 1883.1876 Five Whites and one
Black, in race riot at Cainhoy SC 1849 George Washington
Williams Penns, 1st major black historian

^1793 Marie Antoinette queen of France,
guillotined Marie Antoinette,
queen of France and wife of the late King Louis XVI [23 Aug 1754 –
21 Jan 1793], is guillotined in Paris for alleged treason. Born Maria
Antonia Josepha Joanna von Österreich-Lothringen on 02 November 1755,
in Vienna, Austria, as the daughter of Austrian Archduchess Maria
Theresa [13 May 1717 – 29 Nov 1780] and Holy Roman Emperor Francis
I [08 Dec 1708 – 18 Aug 1765], Marie Antoinette married Louis
in 1770 to strengthen France's alliance with its longtime enemy, Austria.
From the start, Louis was unsuited to deal with the severe financial
problems that he had inherited from his grandfather, and his queen
soon fell under criticism for her extravagance, her devotion to the
interests of Austria, and her opposition to reform. Marie exerted
a growing influence over her husband, and under their reign the monarchy
became dangerously alienated from the French people. In a legendary
episode which never happened, Marie allegedly responded to the news
that the impoverished French peasantry had no bread by declaring "Qu'ils
mangent de la brioche.
At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Marie and Louis resisted
the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the
monarchy in order to save it, and by 1791 opposition to the royal
pair had become so fierce that the two were forced to flee. During
their attempted flight to Austria, Marie and Louis were apprehended
at Varennes, France, and carried back to Paris. There, Louis was forced
to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced him to a mere figurehead.
On 10 August 1792, the royal couple was arrested by the sans-cullottes
and imprisoned in the Temple, and in September, the monarchy was abolished
by the National Convention. The next January, Louis was convicted
of treason and condemned to death by a bare majority of one vote.
On 21 January 1793, Louis walked steadfastly to the guillotine in
the Place de la Revolution in Paris and was executed. Nine months
later, Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason by a tribunal, and,
on 16 October, she follows her husband to the guillotine.

1745 Jacques Autreau, French artist born on 30 October
1657. 1726 Antonio Cristóbal Ubilla y Medina, político
español. 1653 Jan Wildens, Flemish artist born in
1586. 1649 Isaack van Ostade, Dutch artist born
on 02 June 1621 MORE
ON VAN OSTADE AT ART 4 JUNE with links to images.1617 Frans Ambrosius Francken
I, Flemish painter and draftsman, born in 1544.  more
about Ambrosius and the three generations of Francken artists; with link
to an image.1555 Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas
Ridley, Protestants, burned at the stake for heresy in England.
1553 Lucas Cranach Sr.(Müller, Sunder), German
painter born on 04 October 1472..  MORE
ON CRANACH SR. AT ART 4 OCTOBER
with links to images.

^1958 Chevrolet El Camino car
Chevrolet introduced the El Camino
on this day, a sedan-pickup created to compete with Ford's popular
Ranchero model. Built on the full-size Chevrolet challis, the big
El Camino failed to steal the Ranchero's market and was discontinued
after two years. But four years later, in 1964, the El Camino was
given a second life as a derivative of the Chevelle series, a line
of cars commonly termed "muscle cars. The Chevelles were stylish
and powerful vehicles that reflected the youthful energy of the 1960s
and early 1970s, and sold well. The Chevelle Malibu Super Sport was
the archetypal muscle car, featuring a V-8 as large as 454 cubic inches,
or 7.4 liters. Chevelles came in sedans, wagons, convertibles, and
hardtops, and, with the reintroduction of the El Camino in 1964, as
a truck. The station wagon-based El Camino sedan-pickup had a successful
run during its second manifestation as a Chevelle, and proved an attractive
conveyance for urban cowboys and the horsey set.

^1951 Hudson Hornet car
In 1948, Hudson launched its new Monobuilt design, an innovation that
is still found in most cars to this day. The Monobuilt design consisted
of a chassis and frame that was combined in a unified passenger compartment,
producing a strong, light-weight design, and a beneficial lower center
of gravity that didn't effect road clearance. Hudson coined this innovation
"step-down design" because, for the first time, passengers had to
step down in order to get into a car. Most cars today are still based
on the step-down premise. On this day in 1951, Hudson introduced the
Hornet, and put some sting into their step-down design. The Hornet
was built with a 308 cubic-inch (5 liters) flat head in a line six
cylinder motor, producing generous torque and a substantial amount
of horsepower. And it was with this popular model that Hudson first
entered stock car racing in 1951. After ending their first season
in a respectable third place, Hudson began a three-year domination
of the racing event. In 1952 alone, Hudson won twenty-nine of the
thirty-four events. A key factor in Hudson's racing success was the
innovative step-down design of its cars. Because of their lower centers
of gravity, Hornets would glide around corners with relative ease,
leaving their clunky and unstable competitors in the dust.

1945 UN's Food and Agriculture Organization comes into
existence.1937 Los fusiles de la señora Carrar,
de Bertolt Brecht, con Helene Weigel, en el papel principal,. se estrena
en París.1931 James
Chace, US foreign policy thinker and historian, who died on
08 October 2004.1931 Charles W Colson presidential
adviser, Watergate co-conspirator 1930 Dan Pagis,
Romanian-born Israeli poet. 1927 Gunter Grass Germany,
poet, novelist, playwright, painter, and sculptor best known for his first
novel, The Tin Drum. 1923 Disney Company
founded 1919 Kathleen Winsor, author of Forever
Amber.1908 Enver Hoxha post-war Communist dictator
of Albania from 1944 until his death on 11 April 1985.1906
Cleanth Brooks, Kentucky-born writer and educator. 1898
William Orville Douglas, Maine, US supreme court justice (1939-75).
He died on 19 January 1980.1890 Michael
Collins, Irish revolutionary leader and statesman who was killed
on 22 August 1922 in an ambush by IRA insurgents who objected to the peace
treaty that Collins had signed with the British on 06 December 1921, which
partitioned Ireland and required an oath of allegiance to the British monarch. 1888 Eugene
Gladstone O'Neill NYC, dramatist (A Long Day's Journey Into
Night, The Iceman Cometh, Desire Under the Elms  Nobel 1936) He died
on 27 November 1953. 1886 David Ben-Gurion, Plonsk
Poland, 1st PM of Israel (1948-53, 55) He died on 01 December 1973.1921 Philip
Edward Bertrand Jourdain,
English mathematician who died on 01 October 1921. He worked in mathematical
logic. In 1913 Jourdain proposed the card paradox: on one side is printed:
The sentence on the other side
of this card is TRUE. On the other side the sentence is: The
sentence on the other side of this card is FALSE.1877
Frank Cadogan Cowper, English painter, the last of the Pre-Raphaelites,
who died on 17 November 1958.  MORE
ON COWPER AT ART 4 OCTOBER
with links to images. 1874 Otto Müller, German
artist who died on 24 September 1930.  link
to an image. 1874 Pierre-Eugène Montézin,
French artist who died in July 1846.1863 Sir Austen Chamberlain
British Foreign Secretary (Nobel 1925)

^1854
Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Oscar Wilde,
in Dublin, dramatist, poet, novelist and critic. He
grew up in Ireland and went to England to attend Oxford, where he
graduated with honors in 1878. A popular society figure known for
his wit and flamboyant style, he published his own book of poems in
1881. He spent a year lecturing on poetry in the United States, where
his dapper wardrobe and excessive devotion to art drew ridicule from
some quarters. After returning
to Britain, Wilde married and had two children, for whom he wrote
delightful fairy tales, which were published in 1888. Meanwhile, he
wrote reviews and edited Women's World. In 1890, his only novel, The
Picture of Dorian Gray, was published serially, appearing
in book form the following year. He wrote his first play, The Duchess
of Padua, in 1891 and wrote five more in the next four years. His
plays, including The
Importance of Being Earnest (1895), were successful and made
him a popular and well-known writer.
In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry denounced Wilde as a homosexual,
accusing him of having an affair with the marquess's son. Wilde sued
for libel, but lost his case when evidence strongly supported the
marquess's observations. Homosexuality was classified as a crime in
England at the time. Wilde was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced
to two years of hard labor. Wilde was released from prison in 1897
and fled to Paris, where his many loyal friends visited him. He started
writing again, producing The Ballad of Reading Gaol, based
on his experiences in prison. He died of acute meningitis on 30 November
1900. Oscar Wilde won the Newdigate
Prize in 1878 with a long poem, Ravenna. In 1881 he published
Poems. In 1888 he published The
Happy Prince and Other Tales, a romantic allegory in the
form of a fairy tale. His only novel, The
Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890. In Intentions
(1891), he grouped previously published essays. In 1891 also, he published
two volumes of stories and fairy tales: Lord
Arthur Savile's Crime, and Other Stories and A House
of Pomegranates. Wilde is best known as the writer of the plays
Lady Windermere's Fan, Salomé (in French), A
Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and, above
all, The
Importance of Being Earnest. (WILDE ONLINE:)

1849 George Washington Wiliams, historian, clergyman and
politician.

^1797 James Thomas
Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan, baron
Brudenell Of Stonton, British general who died on 27 March 1868. He
led the charge of the Light Brigade of British cavalry against the
Russians in the Battle of Balaklava (25
Oct 1854), during the Crimean War, an incident immortalized in
the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
(1855) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson [06 Aug 1809 – 06
Oct 1892]. Educated at Christ
Church, Oxford, he entered the army in 1824, at a later age than was
then usual, and quickly purchased promotion, becoming lieutenant colonel
of the 15th Hussars by 1832. A martinet of uncertain temper, he quarreled
with his officers, illegally placing one in arrest, and was censured
by the ensuing court-martial and forced to give up his command (1834).
But in 1836 family influence secured him the command of the 11th Light
Dragoons (renamed the 11th Hussars in 1840). He inherited his father's
earldom and fortune in 1837. By spending an estimated £10'000
a year from his private purse, he made the regiment the smartest in
the service (he introduced what came to be called the cardigan jacket);
but again there was trouble because of his severity toward his officers,
which led to a duel with one of them, Captain Harvey Tuckett, who
was wounded. Cardigan faced public anger by demanding trial by his
peers and won his case on a technical point of law. He retained command
of his regiment until his promotion to major general in 1854.
On the outbreak of the Crimean War
(1854) he was appointed commander of the Light Brigade, under his
brother-in-law G.C. Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan [16 Apr 1800 –
10 Nov 1888], with whom he was on bad terms. His brigade saw little
action before 25 October 1854, when the celebrated charge of the Light
Brigade took place. Although Cardigan queried the ambiguous order
from Lord Raglan [30 Sep 1788 – 28 Jun 1855] that originated
the charge, he did not hesitate when the order was repeated but led
the maneuver steadily and gallantly. The charge so struck the imagination
of the British public that Cardigan was lionized on his return to
England, where he was appointed inspector general of cavalry. Later,
when Lieutenant Colonel Somerset J.G. Calthorpe published a book falsely
asserting Cardigan had not led the charge, he sued the author for
libel but was nonsuited on a technicality. He died from injuries received
by a fall from a horse.

1794 Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues, Jewish
French mathematician, banker, Socialist pamphleteer who insisted on the
equality of the races and of the sexes. He died on 17 Dec 1851.1760
Ludwig Hess, Swiss artist who died on 13 April 1800.  more 1758 Noah Webster US teacher, lexicographer and publisher
who wrote the American Dictionary of the English Language He died
on 28 May 1843.1752 Johann G. Eichhorn, German Old
Testament scholar. Eichhorn was a pioneer in "higher criticism," which evaluated
Scripture through literary analysis and historical evidence, rather than
by the unquestioned authority of systematized religious tradition. He died
on 27 June 1827.1708 Albrecht von Haller, Bern,
Switzerland, biologist, the father of experimental physiology, who made
prolific contributions to physiology, anatomy, botany, embryology, poetry,
and scientific bibliography. He died on 12 December 1777.1430
James II, king of Scots since the assassination of his father James
I [ – Feb 1437]. James II was killed by the bursting of a cannon on
03 Aug 1460 while besieging Roxburgh Castle during a campaign against English
outposts in Scotland. He was succeeded by his son James III [May 1460 –
11 Jun 1488]

Thoughts for the day:He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another`s mishap.
He is wiser who, instead of waiting for a mishap, prevents it.
He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another`s happiness.
The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses.
The furrier gets more kicks from asses than from foxes.
Asses kick more furrigners than foxes.
Jackasses on horseback hunt more foxes than furriers do.
Fox hunters get under the skin of more animal activists than of foxes.
Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right. 
“Mark Twain” [30 Nov 1835 – 21 Apr 1910]. {most obvious in politicians,
though occasionally an honest man is elected to the legislature who when bought,
stays bought}You can fool some of the people all the time, and all
the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.
Politicians only care about fooling a plurality of the electorate at election
time.